Bintjbeil | September 21, 2025
By Fatima Besher
I am letting this poem weep,
cry on top of your churches and mosques—
an attempt at silencing the metal lump
the sky decided to keep
before it falls.
With words cut from the womb of a widow,
I try to mourn river and stone,
a single corner, and air above a window,
fractured by the hum, the circling hum,
the long monotone of a drone.
What once was olive green against red bricks
and smooth white walls,
a stairwell that led to a pomegranate
now leading to a child,
buried and bowed beneath its soils,
the loss of collective dignity,
of people who believe they’ve built a country
their own.
O people of the South,
O lovers and brothers,
children of almost dead mothers,
do not wipe the poem’s tears.
Hummmmmmmnnnnnnnnn
Let them fall and drown the echoes
of men—men marching to sleep.
Men marching to sleep,
and a sister waiting for hope
to change its route and come her way.
Rejoice for its coming like a lost sheep,
a lamb returned, though the flock has strayed.
Hummmm hummmmmm mmmmmnnnnnn
My words slip between mountains,
uninhabited trenches,
with limbless angels hanging from their trees.
Between the tides of threatening silence
before a strike weds its victims
into their final retreat.
A new liturgy of absence:
Fall is the last exile.
The world is ready for a new genesis—
lower plains and warmer skies.
But fall is the last exile.
Fall is the last exile.
Fall
Is the last
exile.
